For The Love Of Eagles

About the bald eagle

The bald eagle is the only large brown bird with a white head and tail. It has a massive yellow beak and yellow feet. At maturity it has yellow eyes. Immature bald eagles have dark beaks and are dark all over with highly variable white splotching. The birds don‘t attain sexual maturity and the adult plumage of white head and tail until four to five years old. Sexes are similar in appearance, with females often noticeably larger than males. Northern birds are larger than southern birds.

Bald Eagle Taxonomy

Class: Aves Order: Falconiformes Family: Accipitridae Subfamily: Buteoninae Genus: Haliaeetus Length: 27-35 in. Weight: 9-14 lbs. (females larger than males) Wingspan: 70-90 in. Common Name: American eagle, white-headed eagle, white-headed sea eagle, fishing eagle Etymology: balde (Old English) - “white“; haliaeetos (Greek) - “sea eagle“; leucocephalus (Greek) - “white-headed“

bald eagles are opportunists

They eat just about anything they can catch but their favorite food is fish. A typical bald eagle spends half the day hunting and half that time it strikes out. It’s hard work being a bald eagle so they never look a gift horse (or a fish swimming too close to the surface) in the mouth.

Juvenile bald eagles aren't bald

Juvenile eagles don’t get interested in the opposite sex until they are between four and five years old. It’s at this time their brown feathers molt into the nearly black (but actually dark brown) and white feathers you see on adults.

we share one trait with bald eagles

The beak and feathers of American eagles are made of keritan, the same material that makes up human hair and nails. The bird’s beak has a hook at the tip with an upper mandible behind it used to slice through thick skin. The beak has other uses apart from eating. Though a strong and sharp weapon, it can take care of its mate’s feathers or feed an eaglet.

some interesting eagle factoids

Eagles can live 20-30 years in the wild (longer in captivity) and they typically mate for life. Although if their mate dies, or can’t be located, they will take another. They tend to go back to the same territory to mate so their mating patterns are as much tied to location as they are selection of a partner. Sometimes, a dominant female will fight off a previously paired female in order to steal a mate.

bald eagles love the water

If you know where to look, have the time and money to travel there, you can see plenty of bald eagles in south-eastern Alaska during the winter. But the bald eagle is actually quite plentiful in Florida and nests in every state in the union except Hawaii. They prefer to live almost exclusively in coastal areas, with forested uplands, but they can be found just about anywhere in North America including Canada and Mexico.

the phrase "eagle eye" is valid

Eagles have unusual eyes. They are very large in proportion to their heads and have extremely large pupils. Eagles’ eyes have a million light-sensitive cells per square mm of retina, five times more that a human’s 200,000. While humans see just three basic colours, eagles see five. These adaptations gives eagles extremely keen eyesight and enable them to spot even well-camouflaged potential prey from a very long distance. In fact the eagles’ vision is among the sharpest of any animal and studies suggest that some eagles can spot an animal the size of a rabbit up to two miles away!

Why I love bald eagles

I’ve been fascinated by bald eagles since I was a kid. One of the first things about bald eagle that intrigued me was the fact that the bald eagle is both the national bird and the national animal of the United States. Not all countries designate a national bird or animal, but of the countries that do, none other than the USA has the same listed as both national bird AND animal.

On June 20, 1782, the Continental Congress adopted the still-current design for the Great Seal of the United States including a bald eagle grasping 13 arrows and a 13-leaf olive branch with its talons. The bald eagle appears on our national seal and is used on the presidential seal and the presidential flag. It is also used in the logos of many federal agencies.

Whether or not you’re an American you can still love the majestic bald eagle. It’s a symbol of power and grace never gets old. May the bald eagle continue to soar on the winds.